September 08, 2018

There are groups around that are trying to build tiny homes for the homeless. The problem is where to put them. Do you put them on some kind of foundation? Do you have utility hook-ups? What about drainage? What about mildew and rot from water soaked lumber? One of the big selling points of this approach is that the tiny homes are lockable. My solution would be tents plus lockers for valuables. This solution could be produced much more cheaply and is more flexible in terms of moving things to a different location. While tents are not secure unless they were to be made out of a material that couldn't be easily slashed with a knife (maybe such materials are available, I don't know), tents can be locked. That's some deterrent to would be thieves.

Utility hook-ups should be out of the question. There are battery powered lamps for lighting. Lockers which can be mass produced and made out of mildew resistant material like plastic are the ultimate solution for valuables. These lockers could also be made to be portable. You still would need a plot of land, and the best way to secure that would be to cut a deal with the city. Portable sanitation facilities could also be added, both rest rooms and showers. These solutions have been available for some time. They just need to be scaled up.

The problem with tiny houses is that building materials are expensive, and you would have to rely on volunteer labor to put them together. Securing land from the city of San Diego like the unused, undeveloped land south of Morley Field in Balboa Park would be ideal. They had a temporary tent city there once. I wonder what happened to it. Adding a security guard would relieve the police of a lot of their problems in dealing with the homeless. A step up from there would be adding a social worker to help getting the homeless on the right track to a job and a more permanent housing solution.

The city's campground was opened in October of 2017. The San Diego Union reported:

The city of San Diego on Monday opened a camping area for people who are homeless, with 24-hour security, bathrooms and storage.

The 136-space facility was set up in the parking lot of the city operations yard in Golden Hill, just south of the Balboa Park Golf Course.

The camping area is operated by the nonprofit Alpha Project like a typical campground, with rules and regulations and an on-site manager. Each person will register and be assigned a 13- by 13-foot campsite, but each space can accommodate one or more individuals.

The city said that this solution would be temporary until 3 large tents could be opened. I think people would prefer to have their own individual space, no matter how small, than to be thrown together in a large tent with other people. The city was on the right track with the idea of a campsite for the homeless involving individual tents. Why didn't they continue that?

August 31, 2018

Two recent incidents involving gamers: 1) Wrong way driver in San Diego takes out mother and daughter on freeway. 2) Shooter in Florida at gaming event. The question might be asked: is gaming really an unhealthy obsession? The San Diego Union reported:

"The 18-year-old who sped the wrong way down state Route 805 Thursday, crashing into a SUV and killing himself, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, was a YouTube star who had made a small fortune in video gaming gambling, according to authorities and hundreds of gaming fans on Twitter.

"The California Highway Patrol identified him Friday as Trevor Heitmann of San Diego."

So this young dude had plenty of money he made off of gambling on YouTube and a $250,000 hand made car. Evidently, he knew what he was doing as there were other bizarre incidents involving him that day. Was he on drugs? Whatever his personal circumstances, he had no consideration for the two beautiful, innocent people that he erased from the earth. If he was rich from his ill gotten YouTube gains, his entire estate should go to the family that he destroyed as compensation for this insidious act.

Two people were also killed at a Jacksonville, FL gaming tournament when a fellow gamer gunman opened fire. The occasion was a tournament for competitive players of the football video game, Madden. The winners would go on to a higher level tournament in Las Vegas in October, where large cash prizes could be won. So why is so much money connected with gaming. Most of these guys are young kids, and yet they can make millions of dollars gambling? Is this a healthy lifestyle?

The shooter was David Katz, a 24 year old. According to CNN, Katz went by the gaming name, "Bread", and previously won Madden tournaments in 2017. In February 2017, the Buffalo Bills tweeted out a picture of him after he won the Madden 17 Bills Championship. "Congrats to David Katz, the Madden 17 Bills Championship winner! Thanks for following along, Bills fans," the tweet read. In an interview after the win with former Buffalos Bills player Steve Tasker, Katz talked about his prowess. "I think personally I'm one of the better players," he said.

Heitmann, described on Twitter as “McSkillet”, regularly posted YouTube videos about his websites, CSGOMagic and skin.game, devoted to the Counter-Strike video game and gambling. He posted a video in December of the black McLaren 650S he had bought some months earlier. Without appearing on camera himself, he shows close-ups of the car interior, back end and full view with open wing-like doors. He describes the car as “pretty damn insane” and said he could afford it because he had “made a ton” of money online, with nearly 900,000 subscribers. Reportedly, the McLaren can reach a speed of 200 mph.

Some friends of Heitmann tweeted that McSkillet had lost his income when the Counter-Strike game developer, Valve, “banned his life’s work” in selling slick decals, or “skins” for virtual gaming guns and other toys. Kevin Hitt, editor in chief of VPesport.com online gaming news outlet, said Valve, under constraints from the state of Washington gambling commission, confiscated about $200,000 worth of McSkillet’s skins and shut down his ability to acquire more. Hitt said McSkillet, and others in the gaming gambling world, would take bets on the potential value of skins, and third-party sites would use software to assign a dollar value to different styles of skins, based on their relative rarity. Other sites would make the payouts to betters, taking a commission.

This is all pretty hard to believe. This guy bought and sold skins for some virtual game and then took bets on how much the skins were worth based on their rarity or how much somebody was willing to pay for them? It boggles the mind that there could be so much money involved in something that has no, I repeat no, redeeming social value. These games are allowing young people to get involved in gambling. They are encouraging gambling with all the seamy Las Vegas culture that goes along with it.

No wonder that innocent people are getting killed. The whole gaming world is looney tunes. And the Pizarro family should get young Heitmann's estate.

July 08, 2018

Lyft and Uber Taking Business Away from Parking Lots and Valet Services

by John Lawrence

First taxis saw their business decrease do to ride sharing services. Now parking lots are empty. Why pay for parking when you can Uber or Lyft to the restaurant or event. Parking in cities has become a nightmare and you pay through the nose. For the same money or less you can have someone drive you there. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Ace Parking, the San Diego-based parking giant, has seen a 50% drop in nightclub valet traffic and a 25% drop in restaurant valet traffic. These parking lot owners have made a fortune in the past. Now they're only too willing to sell out their asphalt lots to condo developers that will at least replace all the black top with something more commercially viable. That's why you see high rises sprouting from every parking lot in San Diego with more on the way.

Proper Parking, based in Woodland Hills, has seen a 70% drop in nightclub valet traffic since it started six years ago, said Brandon Helfer, the company’s president. In addition, it has seen a 30% drop in restaurant traffic and a 25% drop at weddings.

“At some nightclubs, we used to park 60 or 70 cars per night,” Helfer said. “It got to the point where we were parking 10 to 20.”

Nightclubs and restaurants, once pillars of the industry, are no longer reliable sources of revenue, Helfer said. In the industry’s heyday, valet companies used to turn such a profit off the gigs, they would pay the venue owners for the right to operate there.

Now the roles have reversed. Those same venues often have to pay the parking companies if they want a valet presence out front.

Helfer’s company is far from the only one affected. Parking expert Casey Wagner, who hosts a National Parking Assn. webinar on the rise of the sharing economy, said the numbers point to ride-hailing services taking a big bite out of the parking, car rental and taxi industries.

Proper Parking — founded in 2012, the year Uber rolled out its services in Los Angeles — was born into a world already familiar with ride-hailing services. It’s openly confronting the change in the industry, finding new ways to profit off its parking services and changing the ones that fail.

So technology is changing the world very rapidly. The interesting thing is that no one has to have a college education to be an Uber or Lyft driver. Now in San Diego there is a third ride sharing service: Bounce. It remains to be seen whether they can compete with the other two. One thing is sure. Nobody need be picked up for drunk driving these days. Even if they drive their own car to the wedding or bar, they can always leave it parked there and Uber or Lyft home, coming back the next day to pick it up. Id they had ride shared in the first place, it wouild have saved them a trip!